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Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

Organization Grows with Addition of Attorneys, Technical, and Membership Staff San Francisco, CA - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced the addition of four new staff members. Kurt Opsahl and Matt Zimmerman join the legal team as staff attorneys, while systems administrator Matt Peterson brings expertise to the technical team...

On August 5, 2004, 40 State Attorneys General wrote an open letter to P2P United, an industry group that represents many of the major peer-to-peer software vendors, such as Grokster, Morpheus, and eDonkey. In the letter, the AGs accuse the companies and their technology of illegal and unethical...

Lawsuit Attacks Secrecy of Meetings Where E-voting Machines Are Evaluated Austin, TX - The ACLU of Texas and a Texas voter today filed a lawsuit demanding that the meetings of the state's voting examiners be held in public. The voting examiners are responsible for studying electronic voting machines and other...

The FCC is considering whether to impose a "broadcast flag" content protection scheme on digital broadcast radio (a.k.a. DAB or HD Radio). The RIAA is pushing for the flag, which would impose FCC technology mandates on all future digital radio receivers. Apparently, the MPAA's success in getting preemptive...

Following up on our earlier report, looks like the FCC sided with TiVo over Hollywood. With respect to this news, Ernie Miller said it best, aided by the magic of sarcasm: As has been widely noted, yesterday, the FCC blessed 13 technologies as compliant with the broadcast flag...

Everybody wants Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), but nobody is really sure what the hell it is. Specifically, law enforcement groups and policymakers are engaged in a tug-of-war over whether the new communication service -- which routes phone calls over the Internet in a variety of ways -- is...

That's a question we've started to hear lot since we started the Digital Television Liberation Project. The short answer: it's the technology mandate. Rob Pegoraro writes in a recent Washington Post article about TiVo's bid to improve its product's functionality that "[If] a programmer or an engineer with...

As has been widelyreported, EFF has filed suit on behalf of JibJab to defend the "This Land" animated short. As we reported last week, music publisher Ludlow Music Inc., owner of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," had threatened copyright litigation against JibJab. In...

Last week, "Internet marketer" Scott Richter got off with a slap on the wrist in one of the most high-profile spam cases in recent months. New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer sued Richter, president of OptInRealBig.com, back in December for sending deceptive junk email, and promised to...

Turns out Woody Guthrie lifted the melody of "This Land Is Your Land" essentially note-for-note from "When the World's on Fire," a song recorded by country/bluegrass legends, The Carter Family, ten years before Guthrie wrote his classic song. Here's a short snippet (380k mp3) of the song (the song...

As mentioned earlier this week, Ludlow Music Inc., owner of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land," is invoking copyright in an effort to silence JibJab's very funny "This Land" animated short (here is Ludlow's latest threat letter).
EFF has taken JibJab on as a client. We've...

A court decision today in a case against people accused of sharing copyrighted files on peer-to-peer networks brought some good news for those concerned about the way the recording industry is pursuing its litigation campaign. In Sony v. Does 1-40, Judge Denny Chin denied (PDF) a motion to stop...